Summer schools

EAPP summer schools are organized with about the same frequency as the conferences. For the organization of the summer schools, often the support is sought of other associations. EAPP-members should feel free to suggest proposals for summer schools to the Executive Committee, which will then be evaluated on their feasibility in terms of content, organization, and finances.

2011 Summer School on
Robust statistics for personality data

The next summer school will take place in 2011 in Bertinoro, Italy on the topic of «Robust statistics for personality data». Organizers of this summer school will be Jens B. Asendorpf ( jens.asendorpf@rz.hu.-berlin.de) and Marco Perugini ( marco.perugini@unimib.it).

Some information on the topic of robust statistics: Traditional parametric statistical procedures such as the Pearson correlation, regression, and tests of group differences by t-tests and analysis of variance depend much more on unrealistic assumptions than most psychologists believe. Biased results due to extreme cases such as outliers or mixed distributions of a small extreme group and a much larger normal group are common in psychology, and may be one of the major reasons for the embarrassingly low replicability of findings in psychological research. In recent years, numerous alternatives to parametric statistics have been developed, called robust statistics (see overview by Erceg-Hurn et al., American Psychologist, 2008, pp. 591-601), and have been implemented in freely available statistical packages such as R or S-Plus.

The aim of the planned summer school on robust statistics is to make participants familiar with robust statistics and its implementation in R. Participants are encouraged to bring own data for analyses under supervision of faculty members.